The Last Hero

by Howard Bryant

  Some of the names were still there, but they were just ghosts, closer to the Old-Timers Game than a September pennant race. Spahn stubbornly beat back time, winning twenty-three games as a forty-two-year-old in 1963, but he would be gone a year later to the Mets and Giants and Cooperstown. Burdette won eighteen games in 1961 but would never win more than ten in a season thereafter. By 1963, he was traded to St. Louis for Gene Oliver and Bob Sadowski. Even Mathews, once projected to give Ruth a run for his money, wheezed to the finish. He would remain with Henry in Milwaukee, but he could never drive in one hundred runs or hit better than .265 after 1961. Mathews, in his time the greatest power-hitting third baseman ever, would hit thirty home runs only once more. In Milwaukee, the names were just that, names that produced a seductive whiff of sentimentality, giving off a teasing and bittersweet aroma no different from that of the old bread factory, which had long ceased production.

  AND THEN THERE was Henry. As a player in his prime who could conjure up the old wistful magic and still put a hurting on Koufax, Drysdale, and the new kids who were starting to dominate the National League, there was, in Milwaukee, only Henry. And he was brilliant: .292 average, 40 homers, 126 RBI, 11 triples in 1960; 34 home runs, a .327 average, and 120 driven in the following year. Then came the two monster years that dwarfed Mays, Mantle, Maris, all of them, and put Henry on the Cooperstown track, an equal with the greats but second to nobody: .323, with 45 bombs, 128 driven in 1962, backed up by a torrid .319 average, with 44 homers, 130 RBI, and 201 hits in 1963.

  Nineteen sixty-three was the big one. At the plate, nobody was better. He led the league in home runs, but only once, on September 10 against Cincinnati, did he hit two in a game. He led the league in runs batted in and runs scored, was second in the league in stolen bases and hits. He lost the batting title to Tommy Davis by seven points—finishing third behind Davis and Clemente—and those seven points would have given him the Triple Crown. The future Hall of Famers on the mound didn’t want any part of him. Henry hit .471 against Drysdale with four homers and .318 off Marichal (though one, Bob Gibson, handled him easily, holding Henry to just two hits in fifteen at bats).

  Perhaps more than any other period in his professional life, the years from 1960 to 1965 would define the enduring parameters of the Henry Aaron story, for it was during those years when the common and convenient belief that Henry Aaron played his entire baseball career in relative obscurity was born. The press was rightfully blinded by Mays and Mantle, but the professionals knew the Aaron presence. It was after 1963 that Drysdale and Koufax nicknamed Aaron “Bad Henry,” and why not? At Dodger Stadium, even though Koufax kept Henry mortal (no homers, three RBI on the year), Henry hit .406.

  “The two things I remember most173 about being behind the plate when Henry came up was that you really couldn’t pitch to him in any sort of pattern and this wonderful sound he made when he came to bat,” said Tim McCarver, the Cardinals and Phillies catcher. “He would step to the plate, settle in to hit. But before he did, he would give this noise that came from the bottom of his throat.

  “There were only two hitters I ever remember making that, that sound when they came to bat: Henry Aaron and Mike Schmidt,” McCarver recalled. “It was so regal, the gentleman clearing his throat before going to work. Never forgot it.”

  The greatest Aaron protectors in the press were on the West Coast, the most prominent being Jim Murray, the legendary Los Angeles Times columnist. Murray believed Henry to be a better player than Willie or the rest. Henry was not exactly pleased, but he adopted the persona of the stoic construction worker building a skyscraper in the Midwest while the entire world was paying attention to Yankee Stadium to the east or to Willie Mays to the west, his peers only reminded by the enormous shadow of his cumulative achievements when he quietly passed another milestone. The other was Frank Finch, the Los Angeles Times writer who covered the Dodgers. Few of his paragraphs regarding Aaron were not prefaced by Finch calling Henry the game’s most devastating hitter.

  Though for all of Henry’s determination to be that person of substance and value, to make his presence as a dominant one on the field and in the public eye, a perfect storm was taking place during these years that would permanently conspire against him and his legacy.

  THE VAUNTED CHARGE that turned Spahn and Burdette, Mathews, and Aaron into superstars never again materialized. Over a span of 959 games over 1,052 regular-season days between opening day 1960 and the close of the 1965 season, the Braves never spent consecutive days in first place, and in those six years, they spent just four days total in first place, easily counted on one hand: one April day in 1961 (record 7–2), another April afternoon in 1963, and August 18 and 20 in 1965.

  And because of that, nobody cared that Henry was making a ferocious charge toward Mount Olympus, toward Cooperstown, toward respect. As the Braves disappeared in the standings, Henry was transformed from a phenomenon to the same unassuming, workmanlike figure they remembered from the 1950s, defined by the stilted commentaries of Furman Bisher and the imperceptive beat coverage of his earlier seasons. Even when a new breed of better educated, younger reporters arrived in the clubhouse, Henry was cold. The new generation viewed race differently from their predecessors and were clearly more sympathetic, but it did not matter. By this time, Henry was no longer a kid, willing to forgive. He had built up a protective wall around his heart, his privacy, his feelings. By this time, Henry had quit trying to cultivate the press.

  “Anytime you went to talk to Aaron, he wouldn’t let you in. You couldn’t get through. You knew that it was rough for him and you tried to let him know that, but he was just mean,” said Jack O’Connell, who has covered baseball for half a century.

  Aside from the periodically jarring wire headline that that quiet Henry Aaron was upset about the sport’s paternalistic role with regard to blacks (“WHEN WILL BASEBALL ADMIT WE HAVE BRAINS?”—AARON) the public at large did not take real notice, either of his dramatic personal evolution or the fact that for six full seasons on top of the five he had already produced during the glory years, he was absolutely killing the baseball.

  He suffered from the fact that his team had lost its relevance and from the unfortunate curse of geography, but he did not know just how right he was about money. His ambitions were easy to misread, for he did not boast as Ruth and Williams and Foxx would, nor did he roil competitively in the mold of a Robinson or Cobb. Still, he knew whom he had to beat to secure his place in the order and he also believed that, to a degree, respect was reflected in money. He had eclipsed many of his teammates on the field of play and yet could not pass them in salary. In 1960 and 1961, Henry earned $45,000, $47,500 in 1962, followed by $53,000 in 1963, $61,000 in 1964, and $63,000 in 1965, according to salary data maintained by the National League. It would not be until 1963 that he would pass Burdette in salary, and he would not pass Spahn or Mathews while each wore a Braves uniform.

  Over the history of the game, there had been only a few players who could bend the system. The original, of course, was Ruth, whose first contract in 1914 called for a salary of $350 per month, but by 1921 he was earning $40,000 per year. In 1927, Ruth earned seventy thousand dollars, and by 1930, with the country in the clutches of the Great Depression, eighty thousand.

  Ted Williams was another. Williams received bonuses based on the Red Sox home attendance. By 1950, Williams was earning ninety thousand dollars.

  But Willie Mays set the pace. In 1960, he signed for $80,000, $85,000 in 1961, $90,000 in 1962, and $105,000 in 1963, 1964, and 1965. During the same period, Mantle earned $60,000 in 1960, followed by $70,000 in 1961, $90,000 in 1963, and $100,000 in both 1964 and 1965.

  Henry did not receive substantial raises, but it was the great Clemente who was clearly the most underpaid player of his era. Clemente earned $17,500 in 1960, the year the Pirates won the World Series, and did not receive a raise. By 1965 he was earning $34,000. For his career, Clemente topped out at $63,333, which he earned in 1972, the final year of
his life.

  Henry understood that playing in Milwaukee may have meant free gas from Wisco, but being situated away from the marketing and intellectual capitals of the country would have a significant cost.

  I don’t think I’ve earned my due174 in publicity or money. I’ve had a few magazine stories, a few endorsements, mostly when we had a strong club in ’57 and ’58. A ballplayer felt it in his pocketbook when there was no National League team in New York, which is where the money is. When the Giants went to San Francisco, I never got what I should. The fans in Milwaukee have been very good to me. They never have booed me, even when I’ve been in some slumps and pulled some booboos on the basepaths. They’ve always been very courteous to me.

  There’s been improvement for the Negro player these last few years, but I still think a lot more can be done. Take myself—I’d like to get the same treatment that the Mantles and Marises have gotten when I do as well as them. We have Mays and Robinson and myself over here in the National League. When we do well we don’t get the publicity and what goes with it like they do. Mays gets more than the rest of us, but he don’t get what he should be getting.

  Aaron was the first of the major black stars who did not benefit from geography, either before he reached the big leagues or after, and what other black players may have lost in financial compensation compared to their white counterparts, Henry lost both in money and, in many ways, in dignity which he would fight to regain and to protect. He came from the nation’s racially charged epicenter—Alabama—where the attitudes and customs reflected those that first drove the country into the Civil War and then sheared it anew after Reconstruction.

  He had sought respect, both as a man and a ballplayer. The perfect storm had conspired against him; other players better situated, with different, more marketable gifts, seemed destined always to be a step ahead of him in the public eye, even if not in the statistical columns. As the second half of the 1960s lurched forward, Henry knew what would separate him not simply from Robinson, Clemente, and Mays but also from Babe Ruth. That something was the all-time home-run record. If he corralled that, they would listen to him. They would all have no choice but to pay attention to what he had to say for the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ATLANTA

  THE END OF the Milwaukee Braves was ugly and litigious, grievances thrown around like third graders do in the middle of a lunchtime food fight: the aggrieved citizens and public figures of Milwaukee versus the eager newcomers of Atlanta, lawsuits directed toward the once-beloved Braves front office, which returned fire with counter accusations and countersuits against the city that had once come gallantly to its rescue. The height of the rhetoric came courtesy of one Mr. John Doyne, an executive for Milwaukee County, who oversaw the Braves County Stadium lease. Doyne believed God and Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick (in this instance, quite close to the same person) needed to intervene on behalf of his city. “This is a moral issue.175 Moral law, if you can use that term, would dictate that we would not try to pirate someone else’s club,” he told United Press International in the summer of 1964.

  Now that really was a cheeky thing to say. Moving the franchise to Atlanta contained precisely the same “moral issues” as when Milwaukee celebrated the arrival of the Braves from Boston in 1953. The only difference this time was that instead of benefiting from the immorality of baseball piracy, Doyne and his friends at the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce were the ones sitting in the loser’s dugout.

  The Braves, meanwhile, were quite ahead of their time, which in the taverns along Wisconsin Avenue was no compliment. Even more than the Dodgers and the Giants, teams more famous for their bitter departures, the Braves had now perfected the art of playing cities against one another for the purpose of extracting more money, better leases, new stadiums, bigger wedges of the financial pie. In future years, sports and business issues between municipalities would become even more important than the score on the field, and in 1964 the Braves had engineered an enduring template. After nearly a century of being a generally nondescript franchise, the Braves had now become infamous pioneers, for teams across all professional sports would, if need be, follow their model, needing nothing more than a few years of tough times before either demanding from the city a new stadium (paid for by the public, of course) or ripping the hearts out of one fan base in search of love from another.

  Unlike ownership’s old guard, which was convinced that television would be the ruin of its collective financial empire, any new owner entering the game needed to learn how to transition from the prewar box-office model to the radio model to television. To the misfortune of Milwaukee as a baseball town, Perini was one of the first owners who began to think about cities not as cities, but as media markets, best valued by the amount of revenue they could produce through electronic media.

  Attendance would always be important, but over time less from actual dollars and more because of what it represented: a product with which people would want to be associated, a product advertisers would pay to support. The Milwaukee Braves radio broadcast network stretched as far as South Dakota, but the 1961 arrival of the Minnesota Twins (the old Washington Senators had run their course) began to choke the outer tributaries that once had belonged to Milwaukee. South Dakota became Twins country. Closer to Milwaukee, Cubs and White Sox games were broadcast to the city, both by grandfather rules and sheer proximity, forcing the Braves to compete with two other teams in its own city. Perini did not help matters, for he would only televise around thirty games per year, not many more than residents in the southern portions of the city and state could see from the Cubs.

  ATLANTA OFFERED THE potential to own the entire region of the South. The closest baseball big-league team was the Cincinnati Reds, 450 miles away. Pro football was even more remote. Not only was it 550 miles to the closest pro city but the team happened to be those weekly Sunday football disasters, the St. Louis Cardinals. These geographic considerations represented an opportunity not to be squandered. Atlanta was the growing hub of the last region in the country not to be tapped for professional sports.

  Lou Perini and the Steam Shovels packed it in in 1962, selling the team to a group of kids for $5.5 million. The head kid was an ambitious thirty-four-year-old Chicago insurance man, William Bartholomay III. The rest of the group, virtually all scions of wealthy Chicago families, wasn’t much older than Bill Bartholomay, who was the youngest of the conglomerate, but it was he who was clearly in charge. And John McHale, Perini’s general manager, who also joined the Bartholomay group, received a share, proof that the transition would be seamless.

  At the initial press conference about the sale, November 16, 1962, Bartholomay endeared himself and his ownership group to city officials by vowing that being from Chicago, a mere eighty-five miles from Milwaukee, qualified them as “local ownership,” a shrewd strategy, considering that even during the winning years, Perini’s emotional and physical distance had worn thin in the city.

  Thirteen years earlier, it had been Milwaukee that represented the future. Now, it was Milwaukee that was geographically challenged, flanked to the south by two teams, the White Sox and Cubs, eighty-five miles away, and now by the former Washington Senators, the American League Minnesota Twins, 375 miles to the west. The region, even though Milwaukee’s population actually increased, had simply grown too small to support a major-league ball club.

  The future was what all mortal men craved, if not the whole thing, then just a slice big enough to serve as an epitaph. In this latest version, Bartholomay thought of himself as a man of singular vision, with an ambition to open a neglected but emerging region to baseball in the same audacious manner as Walter O’Malley. Atlanta was a city with a restless business community and a political landscape undergoing a revolutionary transition, one that would either exacerbate or soothe the racial conflicts that branded the region and divided the nation.

  Bartholomay believed the city represented fertile territory for the right person, someone
who could see opportunity where others saw only obstacles. “I thought about history,”176 he recalled. “The South was changing. Atlanta was the center of commerce there, with an aggressive, committed business community. I thought about how historic it would be to bring baseball to Atlanta in 1965, exactly one hundred years following the Civil War. I was very cognizant of that.”